Product details
- ISBN 9781496238825
- Dimensions: 178 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 15 Jul 2026
- Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Anthropology is inseparable from writing, whether in field diaries, letters, articles, or books. Among these writings, letters form paper bridges—holding a special place as material artifacts uniquely capable of building scholarly communities and sustaining relationships with field collaborators long after the fieldwork is completed.
The story of Franz Boas, one of the founders of American anthropology, can be imagined as a res publica literaria, a network that, like its Renaissance prototype, shaped the contours of transnational anthropology. This two-part volume chronicles more than forty years of Boas's collaborations and friendships with Russian and Soviet anthropologists, following a small group of anthropologists as they built the house of Arctic and Siberian anthropology. Through these letters, readers are introduced to a lesser-known aspect of Boas's political life and his ambition to redefine anthropology as a transnational discipline, one that transcended national borders and political obstacles. Through meticulously gathered correspondence from more than thirty archives in the United States, Russia, France, and Norway, The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 3 reveals an untold chapter in the history of anthropology.
Franz Boas (1858–1942) was a professor of anthropology at Columbia University and a public intellectual and advocate for social justice. He is the author of The Mind of Primitive Man, Primitive Art, Anthropology and Modern Life, and Race, Language, and Culture, among other books. Dmitry V. Arzyutov is an assistant professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University and an honorary research fellow at the University of Aberdeen (United Kingdom). He is the author of numerous journal articles and book chapters in English, Russian, French, German, Finnish, and Swedish, dedicated to Siberian and Arctic Indigenous ethnohistory, environmental history, and the history of anthropology. Sergei A. Kan is a professor of anthropology at Dartmouth College. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including A Maverick Boasian: The Life and Work of Alexander A. Goldenweiser (Nebraska, 2023), Sharing Our Knowledge: The Tlingit and Their Coastal Neighbors (Nebraska, 2015), and Lev Shternberg: Anthropologist, Russian Socialist, Jewish Activist (Nebraska, 2009). Laura Siragusa is an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Linguistics and in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures at the Ohio State University. She is the author of Promoting Heritage Language in Northwest Russia. Alexander Pershai is an associate director of equity at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Pershai has published a book in Russian on gender stratification in idiomatic expressions.
